Disease, diagnosis, devastion and the decision to be still

If you’ve ever been diagnosed with a disease that threatens to shorten your life or contort it into a lifetime of pain and disability, you may recognise that terrible urgency that descends. Where once, you could waste time, faffing about and putting things off till ‘later’, suddenly you feel a desperate awareness that time is not infinite and that there are many things that you still have ‘to do’. A kind of speeded up bucket list where clarity comes along amongst the confusion. 

The book you always want to write, the American road trip you were always going to take, perhaps even just the loft you were going to clear and convert into a yoga space. Suddenly you must do it all....yet you can’t. That’s the devastion that runs deep. When you are young and well, it seems that all of this is possible.....sometimes you may even wish the time away, so long do some days seem, so full are the days of the daily matters. Now you cannot even hold a cup of tea, never mind carry the bucket full of adventures you once dreamt of. 

A diagnosis of disease, a reality check that death really does exist, this is what may wake you up and make you realise there is still so much life you wish to lead. At the same time as your body, or your mind, or both, are moving in the opposite direction, dragging you back, holding you down, you want to do everything you ever thought you could but the fear and the fatigue that come will render you paralysed......sometimes quite literally.

The days when you would say you were tired and everyone would agree that they too were knackered after a weekend of partying, or working, or just keeping the house clean.....these become the halcyon days of a light tiredness that meant you could still function. Still go to work, still go for a drink afterwards, still do your own shopping. Still live your full and busy life. 

We don’t really know tired until our bodies begin to breakdown. Like computers running on out of date software, like the dial up tone of early internet connections, a diseased body will simply not run as you want it to. No matter how detailed the assignment, no matter how urgent the deadline. 

All manner of things suddenly begin to disrupt the pathways and where once you could eat what you want, now you become aware that the ‘wrong’ food can render you prostrate with exhaustion as your overrun system tries to process its digestion. You may become a bit obsessed with food, weeding out all the triggers whilst wanting to eat what you always have and not wanting to be the food bore at the dinner party.  Just thinking about it will send you looking for a lie down. 

You may wish to carry on as normal yet all the while, your body screams at you. Don’t do that, please don’t put that in, please, please, just lie down and let me be. Your mind will tell you it’s all a lie, a terrible mistake, there’s nothing wrong and you must just push on. Your spirit will ebb and flow and try to find its way through the darkness and into the light and all around you, people will say, ‘gosh I’m tired today’ and you will want to poke their eyes out because they Just. Don’t.Understand.

At some point, decisions must be made because it becomes impossible to carry on as if nothing is happening. You’re sick, you’re dying, life does end so how the living hell are you supposed to simply be still and be in the moment like all the well-being books suggest? What’s the point of stillness when there’s still so much to do? 

There is no real answer is there? Other than to remember that we are like nature itself. Speeded up versions of a beautiful garden that simply grows, then dies, then grows again. Some bits are visible all year round and some emerge miraculously after the cold, hard, quiet of winter. Stillness allows us to really rest. Gives us a chance to show our beauty without forcing it. Who knows how leaves on a tree grow and then know when to fall..it just happens in the stillness that we don’t see. 

All these years after diagnosis, fighting the depression that threatened to drown me, boosting my system with artificial highs that depleted me more, I have learned that actually, by being still, really still, even for just a little while, my system thanks me. Body, mind and spirit all come together in the quiet and the reward is that I can do more than I expected. More than I could when I was frozen with fear and still eating junk that has no place in a delicate and sophisticated frame.  A recognistion that I’m more complex than a smart phone. Complex and smarter.

I’ve written that book. I don’t want to go to America anymore and my yoga space is at ground level. But it’s there. It’s all there. The loft doesn’t really matter. I can close the hatch and keep it all contained. What matters is that by being still, my health got a bit better, my happiness became deeper, my love grew stronger and I was able to laugh again. Life is a ridiculous, roaring adventure and it’s moment by moment that it all begins to make sense. It ends for all of us, no matter how fast we run. So why not sit quietly and drink it all in, diagnosis or not. All we have is now. Now is a good time to be still.

#hahalalamood 💖💫